In an industrial robot, a suitable end effector (hand) corresponding to its work contents is mounted to a distal end of a robot arm, and an object to be handled which is held by the end effector is transferred by driving the robot arm. In a production line for completing a product by assembling various kinds of objects to be handled (components) with different forms and dimensions, an industrial robot capable of dealing with multiple kinds of objects to be handled is needed.
If dedicated robots are arranged for each kind of object to be handled, space needed to install the robots increases and cost for manufacturing the robots also increases. Therefore, there is a request that a single robot can deal with different work contents and objects to be handled.
Thus, industrial robots are proposed, wherein a hand mounted to a distal end of a robot arm can be automatically exchanged as a whole according to work contents, or wherein the configuration of the hand mounted to the distal end of the robot arm can be partially changed according to forms and dimensions of objects to be handled (Patent Documents 1, 2).